


see a world

by thethrillof



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Gen, POV Second Person, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 09:50:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12702390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thethrillof/pseuds/thethrillof
Summary: You meet again.It doesn't go the way you expected.





	see a world

You don’t--you don’t like the guy. At all. You sort of hate him, in fact, a slow-burning thing growing in your guts a day after you fled. 

There’s been time to dwell on what he did, though. Six months is ages for thought when you're hiding for half of it, scrambling for your life for the other.

It’s been a little more than that now--there hasn’t been a quiet minute since you left the Resistance. You’re still helping where you can, and that’s just about everywhere. A pair of willing hands are pretty helpful for anything.

So even though you didn’t have as much time to mourn and dwell in your own angst nowadays, you’ve seen plenty of damage he’s caused. It might’ve been on Eggman’s orders, but it was all him and his (maybe-more-than-)illusions. You’ve seen so much suffering, even with the startling hope you see kindle in strangers’ eyes when they see you. You’re a hero, they say. All the Resistance soldiers are, but you’ve surpassed them, you worked with  _Sonic,_  only even Sonic wasn’t enough to erase all the misery of half a year under tight control. 

It seems you swinging in makes this whole rebuilding, new beginning stuff, feel more _real_. It does for you, too.

Between fixing up buildings, tracking down split neighborhoods and families, and fighting back Eggman's remaining robots, you thought if you ever saw him again, you’d…want to do something. Maybe in the middle of one of his crushing speeches just slam your feet into his head, punch him, use your Wispon at point-blank-range until he writhed, dent and crack that mask until it fell clean off. You’d come up with plenty of nasty words that you knew you’d never be able to really let out of your mouth about that mask, what it means that he was hiding behind it while he committed his atrocities.

 _Fear, then pain._  It clings to you when you think those ugly cruel thoughts that a hero probably shouldn’t be having--but you allowed yourself them anyway. It didn’t stop you from doing hero-y things or the satisfaction and joy that came from it all, so it isn’t like it mattered.

The truth, as it always tends to be, turns out to be more complicated than that.

On the border of one of Eggman’s under-construction half-cities, a settlement of armadillos asks you for assistance. They don’t want to go too deep inside, parts are still functioning despite it being abandoned, could you please go in and fight the machines for them?

Of course you will. In, smash some things, deactivate others, make it safe enough to at least travel through, out, it's your second most common job on your journey and you've got it down to nearly instinct.

You wouldn’t have known him if he wasn’t speaking. Or screaming. Something in-between. His voice is distinctive, even when it’s been roughened by shouting and quite possibly not having anything to drink for a while.

Between a set of ugly pillars, a half-painted mess that reminds you of hideous confetti, ground littered with shattered parts of robots, he's standing there. His mask is missing. His mane and tail are dark and tangled to the point of maybe being matted. You notice with a lurch in your chest that he's covered in blood.

You just stare. You aren’t hiding, just standing on a level slightly above him, trailing dirt from your traversing at high speeds from the more natural outside area. Right now, you could leap and use your grapple to slam into him almost without effort. Your limbs start adjusting themselves, pure habit and instinct preparing to do just that.

Barely a dozen steps away, Infinite doesn’t even notice you.

“Shut up,” he snarls at the shadows between the pillars. “Shut _up_. I’m not. I am not weak. I am not weak!”

There’s an urge to correct him that dies in your throat. You’ve learned silence from your time just surviving…even if you didn’t, you aren't sure you could say anything now even so.

Far away as he is, you still twitch when he lashes out, claws scraping paint from the concrete, and you belatedly realize he has no weapons. He’s still shouting about not being weak. You wonder what he’s seeing.

Between towering, half-finished buildings, the sun is beating on your back. 

How long has he been here?

Instead of a leap, you take a step forward. Your shadow stretches far enough to clip over his legs, and he finally notices.

He turns, fingers shaking under half-torn gloves, flashing sharp teeth and his whole body is subtly swaying. Mismatched blue-yellow flick down to his own hands and back up to your face, voice raising and repeating: “I am not weak!  _Child,_  I am not weak!”  

Infinite attacks. 

It’s honestly the most pathetic thing you’ve ever seen.

You barely have to move to dodge his swings. Half the time he seems to forget he’s empty-handed, trying to strike you far out of range; a time or two, he aims in a completely different direction. His eyes are wild, and you have an unexpectedly sinking feeling that he thinks he’s hitting people who aren’t here.

It turns into a dance, almost. He swings, you move, weaving-leading him through the stripes of pillars. His footsteps echo more than yours.

It ends on your first attack. One jump, one strike, and when he hits the ground on his back he  _stays_ there.

He  _screams_.

No more denials of ‘weakness’, none of his old smug eloquence you half-expected to shake out of him, just a noise, long and loud and ringing through the metal-concrete jungle.

He struggles to sit up, and when he manages to, you're completely taken off guard by how he slams his claws against his own chest.

That tuft of fur that curves around his neck, clumped-up and filthy as the rest of him, hid it, but now you see plain as day: a crisscross of matching marks, half-crusted over with dried blood, layered over his sudden set of new ones. He doesn’t even seem to feel it.

Your throat seizes. 

You'd been looming, but you don’t have to think before you’re on him, shoving him back down and pinning his arms to the ground.

Your reward is a set of fangs sinking into your shoulder.

Your answering noise could be considered soft, compared to the scream that’s still echoing in your head and possibly the entire city. Your responding head-to-head slam is somewhat less so.

…And it works.

When you blink the stars out of your vision, he’s still conscious, or close enough--his eyes are zeroed on your face, steadier than they were during the entire excuse of a fight you just ended. He was shaking since you first saw him, but now it’s worse, enough to rattle in your chest.

He tries to say something. Nothing comes out except a wheezing gasp.

You sympathize. More than you want to, more than you really should.

A thoughtless urge has you loosen your grip. He shoves you away immediately, and you let it happen, even rock to stand on your feet and take a step backwards. At least _you’ll_ be out of range of his only ‘weapons’.

His hand flies back to his self-inflicted wound--your head snaps forward, and he stops. Just...stops. Completely frozen. Except his hands.

Because of you.

You can see it in his face: he’s afraid. He’s  _terrified_. 

Of  _you_.

Of all the ironies.

“I…I am…”

He doesn’t finish. His stare jumps from your face to your Wispon to your hands and back.

You reach out again, and he flinches.

It’s not satisfying. You wish it was.

Slowly but firmly, you fix your hand around Infinite's arm and pull him up. He’s dead weight, he doesn’t help  _or_ resist, and now you have a strangely empty-looking friend-murderer and public enemy number two resting limply against your healthy shoulder.

You eye his chest. Glance at the blood running down your arm. Silently, sigh.

It’s going to be a long journey back.


End file.
